Republican Party Reptile(40)
Since money is hackneyed and power is trivial, the real gauge of Hollywood status is fame. People are introduced in terms of their fame, even if they don’t have any: “This is Heather. She would have been on Good Morning America if Andropov hadn’t died that day.” Fame is so important that the slightest association with it confers standing: “I’d like you to meet Trevor. His sister-in-law goes to the same chiropractor as Bo Derek’s aunt.” Even physical proximity to fame will do: “Wayne here lives three blocks away from Sonny Bono.”
Fame of one’s own is best, of course, but it’s strictly quantitative. Any kind of fame will do. A lesser-known Supreme Court justice, the woman who tried to shoot Gerald Ford, and the actor who played Timmy on the Lassie TV show are about equal.
If absolutely no fame or any association with it can be mustered, then singularity will do. The people of Hollywood put immense effort into making themselves unusual. This isn’t easy in a world where being normal is the next worst thing to being pale and fat. Half a dozen soi-disant actresses may show up at a party in identical skunk-striped pedal pushers, yellow rain slickers, and antique corsets worn as blouses. In the last resort, Hollywood people buy strange automobiles and show you a 1962 pink Cadillac limousine with a baby grand piano built into the backseat. “It’s the only one like it,” they’ll say. True, thank God.
With no values larger than the self, no sensible norms, no meaningful pecking order, and no fixed goals or objectives except attracting attention, Hollywood is a place of confusion. Play is confused with work and duty with employment so that a $50 million stock issue, a tennis match, and a dangerously ill mother are all greeted with the same mixture of frantic worry and stupid enthusiasm. Hollywood people often get themselves in financial trouble because they forget that spending thirty hours a week at a Nautilus gym is difficult, but no one will pay you to do it.
Confusion reigns in every aspect of existence. Romance is remarkably muddled. Sex is confused with love. Love is confused with marriage. People not only go to bed on a first date but discuss business there. Couples don’t stay wed long enough to get to know each other. Child-rearing is muzzy in the extreme. Children are mistaken for friends or, sometimes, possessions. Often there seems to be a casting call for baby in the house. Who will get the part? Will it be Mom? Mom’s third husband? Or the baby? There is even spatial confusion in Hollywood. Practically everyone runs or jogs. Then he gets in the car to go next door.
No distinction is made between private and public life. All talk, even to the dogs, is about money, power, and fame. Or it would be if anyone’s attention span were long enough. Hollywood conversations are disconcerting things to overhear.
Producer A: “We paid a million five for our house.”
Screenwriter B: “Did anybody get fired at Universal Studios today?”
A: “Cher dyed her hair green.”
B: “What did that Rolex cost you?”
A: “I just signed to do a sequel to Rhinestone.”
B: “We paid a million three for our place in Palm Springs.”
Even Hollywood people can’t keep this up for long without going nuts. As a result, talking on the telephone has replaced real conversation. Not that you ever talk to the person you called. There are too many answering machines, answering services, call-waiting features, multiple lines, and extension phones in peculiar places like the car trunk. And whoever you called is always on the phone already anyway. Instead you have long, intimate talks with the decorator, the Mexican gardener, the secretary, the nanny, or, most often, a phone repairman. This and cute recorded messages is how Hollywood people stay in touch. And stay in touch they must. No one in Hollywood is secure enough to spend five minutes alone with his thoughts.
Hollywood people are insecure about their taste, about their intellect, about themselves. And they should be.
Taste cannot function in such an environment because taste is contextual. Taste is the appropriate thing, and nothing can be appropriate to everything and nothing at once. A Hollywood individual may have a sense of style, but it’s a loose cannon on the deck. When you drive through Beverly Hills you see grand Spanish haciendas with English lawns, charming French chateaus with attached garages, stately Tudor manses with palm trees and cactus gardens, all built right next to each other on dopey suburban lots. The owners could afford vast estates except they’re ignorant of nature. They could own elegant townhouses but there’s no town to put them in. Instead they live in a World’s Fair of motley home styles divorced from natural setting and human community alike.